6. The 7-Step TRIZ Process

TRIZ can seem very complex with many new words and ideas which, when you
are not fully comfortable with it, can make the development of new ideas
somewhat more difficult. When building TRIZ, the Soviet TRIZ scientists
had technology very much in mind, so most TRIZ examples strongly feature
machines and mechanics. Sometimes it is not easy to see the process
ideas embedded in the solutions for the devices being re-invented.

We have been asked again and again to simplify TRIZ and to make it
applicable to non-technological areas such as services, marketing,
software programming, and systems design rather than hardware design. So
we applied the methods in this book to TRIZ itself, taking out the
technical elements to leave the core process intact.

You can use this simple matrix approach as a start to learning and using
TRIZ and then move onto the more traditional TRIZ approach. You can
also, of course, use it for technical as well as non-technical
inventing.

To make the process simple, a short list of steps is used. Practise
Steps 1 to 3 on many different everyday things from the design of your
kettle, to planning a holiday, to using your time at work. Then as you
get to use these steps easily you will find the others get easier to
use, too.

When you are familiar with the steps you can vary and extend the
approach by jumping around inside these steps or go on to a more
detailed approach.